Zach Pearson
Equinox Staff
A late snowfall in March was an ominous start for a new and unproven program. But Alison Riley, coordinator of Student and Community Relations at Keene State College, was not daunted by the unexpected weather, and after a one-week delay, she launched the first successful pick-up date for Adopt a Street, her volunteer-based program that assigned Keene city streets to 12 on-campus organizations.
Participating organizations pledge to keep their street free of litter with scheduled clean up days throughout the school year.
After this spring’s pilot phase, Riley said next year will be the first full academic year for Adopt a Street. Twelve campus organizations have agreed to participate, and about half of them already have one or two pick-up dates under their belts. Five groups picked up their adopted streets in March, while seven groups participated in April–two groups on Sunday, April 21; two groups on Saturday, April 27; and then three more groups followed on Sunday.
Riley explained that the idea for Adopt a Street came out of her regular meetings with Keene’s Code Enforcement Officers Josh Gorman and Fred Parsells. Working for the city of Keene, their job involves frequent stops at especially messy properties in Keene. Whether the tenants are off-campus students or permanent citizens of Keene, Gorman and Parsells will ask that they pick up their trash.
“We just started to talk about ways of being more proactive about that,” Riley said, “It’s just been through working together and brainstorming ideas. And it’s not a new idea. Lots of towns do programs like this. So we just thought maybe there was a way to tie this in with community service for students and get off-campus students to have more buy-in in terms of their neighborhood.”
Riley has a couple of ideas for how to give campus organizations more of that buy-in. “Some of these groups, what I said to them is, ‘If you have a house or a couple of houses of team members or Greek members that live in a given area, then I think there’s a little more incentive to keep that area nice.’”
Riley also spoke of future possibilities. “The city and I have talked about maybe doing some semi-permanent signage in the neighborhoods. You may be familiar with going into towns where some organization has adopted a section of road and there’s a sign that will say, ‘This area kept clean by the Lions Club’, you know? I think it would be great if we could do something like that.”
When designing Adopt a Street, Riley’s goal was to keep it as simple as possible so organizations could participate with minimum hassle. Pick-ups are scheduled four times a year: twice in the fall and twice in the spring. Each organization is asked to send at least five members to these pick-ups.
Emily Ricardi, vice president of Programming for Delta Phi Epsilon, participated in a March pick-up of Davis Street alongside 15 to 20 of her sisters. She thought it was very quick and easy, taking less than an hour of their day and filling up about 20 trash bags.
Of the experience Ricardi said, “I feel like this is a good program because it designates people to certain areas and gets more around the campus clean.”
According to Riley, Adopt a Street could be beneficial not only to the students but to their relationship with the greater community of Keene. “I think the students are getting something out of cleaning up the area. I also think it’s nice for town residents and staff and so forth to see that’s going on, that students are committed to that.”
Kelsey Bailey, a junior on the women’s soccer team, recounted her own experience. “When we did it back in March, we had people pull over to the side of the road and say ‘Thank you for picking it up,’ recognizing that we all had our jackets on. Many people were thanking us for cleaning up.”
Ricardi had a similar story to tell. As she and her fellow sororities sisters made their way down Wilcox Terrace this past March, families actually “came out and they were so happy. They were like, ‘Usually we have to do this ourselves.’ They were so appreciative.”
“I think the biggest impact we can make is not just at the street level, getting that one street looking nicer,” Jay LaFord, the community service chair for Tau Kappa Epsilon said, continuing, “I think it’s more improving relations with the city and improving the relations between so-called townies and college students and kind of building those relations and also having other organizations step up and be involved in that process as well.”
“As long as I’m here I’ll definitely keep doing it,” Shawn Egan, a junior on the men’s baseball team, stated. “We’ve got some good kids, so I’m assuming they’ll step in, and they’ll keep it going because it’s good for the town.”
With two dates established, junior Nicole Rutigliano said she thinks the women’s swim team will stick with it for years to come, “because like I said it’s not something hard. You only need five people out of the 30 on the team to go each time.”
Bailey said, “I think it’s a good thing for us to do and I think it would definitely be beneficial if they eventually got all the teams.”
Asked if Delta Phi Epsilon would continue to participate, Ricardi replied, “absolutely.”
Riley explained her goal is instilling pride in students for their assigned neighborhood. “I think it’s one of those things that if you’ve gone out and picked up the trash yourself, you’re more aware of ‘This could really be a bad thing if we’re walking through and we’re just tossing things and not taking care to throw it in a garbage can.’ So I think it’s taking pride in your community.” Sara Cipot, the community service chair for Kappa Beta Gamma said, “It’s our community. We’re not just Keene State [College]. We’re Keene, N.H.”
Riley will make a big push for organizations to sign up in the fall as Adopt a Street kicks off its first full academic year. If you are interested in joining Adopt a Street or have questions, Riley can be contacted at ariley3@keene.edu.
Zach Pearson can be contacted at zpearson@keene-equinox.com